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Category Archives: Student Activities

During their years in DCPS, many students pour their hearts and soul into school clubs and teams. When they graduate, it can be hard for them to walk away from a team they helped build – raising the question of what we can do as teachers can do to help our students’ legacies live on.

The robotics team captain this year has been incredibly dedicated to the team, to the point where he considered making his college choice based on geography – just so he could stay on as a team mentor next year. Strong students like him are instrumental in making clubs thrive. When they graduate, however, they can sometimes leave a lack of student leadership in their wake (especially when the team is mostly made up of seniors). As the year comes to a close and I think about the year ahead, I’ve been thinking a lot about what type of information has to be passed on from one generation of team leadership to the next. Without a strong transition plan, once vibrant clubs can start to wither and fade away. Below are the key areas I believe should be documented, to give a club its best chance at continuing to flourish.

Club/Team History

Why this matters:

Almost every grant application, marketing flier, or business plan requires a team history, and those histories are hard to recreate once enough detail has been lost. If your team doesn’t have one yet, documenting one creates a great base for the future.

What should be documented:

Genesis story – when was the team founded, by who, why, and with what resources.

Major milestones – how many students, number or type of competitions attended, performance at competitions, and other outcomes.

Student information – names, years participated, year graduated, where they went after school, and email address (so you can stay in touch! Being able to cite statistics on college attendance and graduation rates for student members can be helpful for telling your team’s story).

Student testimonials – these can be used to help improve marketing and recruiting materials, and it’s great to already have a supply of quotes at the beginning of the year.

Finances and Funding

Why this matters:

Knowing about your past funding sources is often a key aspect of applying for grants and pitching potential donors, since you need to be able to make the case for how they can uniquely add value.

Knowing how much money the team spends and on what is helpful both for planning and for soliciting financial support (so they know how much money you need and what you would spend it on).

What should be documented:

If your team has already been tracking finances well, look through all information to make sure it would make sense to a third party.

If you haven’t been tracking finances well, you should write down expenditures and purpose of those expenditures (ideally time of year spent as well, to get a sense of money needs throughout the flow of the school year), sources of funding and process for acquiring those funds, and details on any team-driven fundraising efforts.

Resources:

Why this matters:

It’s always sad to see a wealth of knowledge fade away. Helping the next set of leaders not have to build from scratch will help them continue strengthening the team instead of rebuilding it.

What should be documented:

Key people who are helpful to talk to, and what they’re helpful for. This could include other coaches and students across the city, people at your school (students, teachers, school leadership, and administrative and janitorial staff), parents, etc.

Important websites, books, etc. that your team often references.

Make sure any supplies for the team are well organized. If there’s time, make a list of the key supplies, what they’re used for (if it’s not obvious), and where they’re located.

Documents – gather together all of the documents the team has created (student surveys, grant applications, advertising fliers, etc.) and put them in an online folder that can be shared easily.

Logistics

Why this matters:

As with the last section, saving your successors time next year will help them do more with the team. It’ll also help the team start up smoothly the next year, reducing the risk of losing new recruits due to a rocky start.

What should be documented:

Team structures – student leadership positions and a description of each position, how often and how long meetings are, when the season starts and ends and is most intense.

Things you wish you had known when you joined the team. Little things like needing to bring extra pens, paper, and highlighters to competitions (so you can scout the other teams and highlight your matches) can make things smoother and simpler.

Invest advocates for next year

Why this matters:

When the most active students in a club are seniors, the club can sometimes die after they graduate. In these situations, it’s incredibly important to make sure there is a group of people who are prepared and poised to advocate for the continued existence of the club and also to advocate for resources for that club at the start of the year (when they’re often given out).

What should be done:

To make sure the team stays strong, you need to figure out who has both the will power and the capacity to advocate for the team next year and make sure it continues. Depending on the team, this could be students, parents, administrators, or teachers. Depending on who they are and what they team needs, they might need to recruit new students, recruit a new team coach, convince certain students to take on leadership positions, or more.

Once advocates are identified, work with them to make sure they’re prepared with an understanding of what the team will need next year to keep it running.

Stay in touch! If student leaders are willing to be contacted after they graduate, the team should have a list of their contact information. It’ll be a great way to maintain continuity for the team, and for the graduating students to build their mentoring and leadership skills.